Temporal imaginaries in discourses on eco-citizenship
(2026) DN33. Discourse, Sustainability and Education: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate and Communication — Location: https://discourseanalysis.net/DN33 (26.March.2026)
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- Abstract
- This contribution explores how young people’s environmental citizenship is discursively constructed, negotiated, and sometimes foreclosed within marginalised and activist youth collectives in Belgium. Drawing on a participatory ethnography and discourse analysis in both local participatory “Jeunesses Vertes” frameworks and Activist movements, the research mobilises the Essex school’s ontological approach (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) to examine temporal imaginaries (Edensor et al., 2020; de Moor & Marquardt, 2023; Denis 2025). The study identifies how activist collectives saturate citizenship discourse with climate urgency, constructing the present as a site of crisis that legitimises immediate mobilisation and collective responsibility. In contrast, marginalised youth in participatory settings articulate temporalities marked by suspended agency, resource constraints and deferred commitment, while projecting more gradual, collective futures. Across both contexts, discursive strategies of politicisation and depoliticisation entangle imaginaries revealing persistent tensions between neoliberal constraints, social inequalities, and the aspiration for transformative agency. The results suggest that the performative negotiation of temporalities shapes not only what counts as political action but also the conditions under which environmental citizenship can become genuinely inclusive and operative. Thus, this contribution critically engages with the discursive limits and possibilities for climate-related civic agency among youth, highlighting the challenges and potentialities of activating new imaginaries in the face of endemic barriers and structural inequalities.
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Vossen, K., & Jacobs, T. (2026). Temporal imaginaries in discourses on eco-citizenship. DN33. Discourse, Sustainability and Education: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate and Communication, https://discourseanalysis.net/DN33.